23 June: Boreham on John Hampden

Idyll of Statesmanship
Few people occupy a more enviable place in history than John Hampden, the anniversary of whose tragic death we mark tomorrow. No man ever had more claims upon the grateful homage of his fellows. He represents English Puritanism at its very best. In him it flowered; he is its most finished product. In Puritanism's golden age, he is its most courtly, its most cultured, its most engaging figure. In contrast with the experience of most public men, his robust piety deepened as his political power increased; his downright goodness became more evident as his inherent greatness asserted itself; his fearless and commanding statesmanship was equalled only by his transparent simplicity. Lord Clarendon, who stands unrivalled as a penetrating analyst of character, regards Hampden as, quite easily, the mightiest man of his time.

He who would comprehend the forming of such a figure must visit one of the most entrancing and sequestered valleys in Buckinghamshire. The great beechwoods stretch away in every direction. The song of the birds is almost deafening, whilst the wild flowers drape every bank and knoll with fragrant beauty. Every here and there one comes upon delightful dells in which ferns run riot and primroses twinkle. On the crest of a distant hill stands one of the stateliest homes in England. It is approached by noble avenues of poplars, oaks, and elms. This is the family seat of the Hampdens. Lord Nugent says that nobody who has a heart for high and breezy hills, for green glades enclosed within the shadowy stillness of ancient woods, and for leafy avenues of exquisite dignity and grace, can visit the home of Hampden without admiring the lofty patriotism that could tear him from such an idyllic retreat to the toils and perils to which he so entirely and so ungrudgingly devoted his life.

Character Moulded By Cyclonic Events
It was amidst these bewitching and romantic scenes that John Hampden was reared. He was born six years after the defeat of the Armada. We catch a glimpse of him as a little fellow, spending an hour as he best loved to spend it. He is sprawling on the hearth rug in the great drawing room, his fine head, with its piercing eyes and its shock of rich brown hair, resting on his mother's knee. He wears a velvet suit with silk stockings and silver buckles. His mother describes the coming of the Spanish galleons, the anxiety that brooded over the nation as the ships approached, and the delirious joy that greeted the famous victory. He loved to hear of Drake and Hawkins and Frobisher and all the other stalwarts of that stirring time. They had most of them been honoured guests in the Hampden home; Sir Francis Drake had stooped and kissed the small boy's forehead before sailing on his last voyage.

John Hampden was only three when the death of his father left him the heir to this ancestral estate. He was only eight when his mother told him of the death of Queen Elizabeth. He never forgot the darkness of that hour. It seemed incredible that the splendid idol of his boyish hero worship was no more. The spacious days of great Elizabeth were over! His mother, in breaking the heavy news, reminded him that his grandfather, old Griffith Hampden, once entertained good Queen Bess in these very halls, and had the noble drive through the woods—still known as the Queen's Gap—cut specially for her approach. Thus the most momentous events punctuated the impressionable days of Hampden's plastic youth.

A Gallant Death Crowns A Noble Life
By his knightly figure, his courtly behaviour, his faultless judgment, his strength of character and his cultured voice he soon made himself master of every assembly that he joined. His fine unselfishness, his beautiful modesty, and his stark sincerity won all hearts. The historians agree that, in the days that he adorned, there were moments when the destinies of England trembled in the balance. The throne was tottering; the institutions on which the national life depended were in the melting-pot; everything was at risk. In that crisis the issue hung upon Hampden. "The eyes of all men," as Lord Clarendon says, "were fixed upon him as the pilot who must steer the vessel through the tempests and rocks that threatened it." "We can scarcely express," says Macaulay, "the admiration that we feel for a mind so great. Almost every phase of this virtuous and blameless life is a precious and integral portion of our national tradition." Few pages in our annals are more affecting than those that describe the death of Hampden in the early days of the Civil War. Mortally wounded, he rode from the field and was taken into a cottager's home to breathe his last. He was 49.

Clarendon declares that, if their entire army had been annihilated, the consternation of the Parliament could not have been greater. Nor was the grief confined to his own party. Although he lost his life in resisting the arbitrary assumptions of the throne, he died praying for the King, and no man was more sorry than the Sovereign to hear of the tragedy. For the King knew Hampden; he admired and trusted him; he built his hopes for the future on the prospect of seeing so wise, so just, and so good a man holding high office in his realm. Cromwell not having yet attained his full stature, there was no man living who could take the vacant place. Nor did time assuage the universal sense of desolation. Years afterwards, as Macaulay finely says, England sadly missed the sobriety, the immaculate judgment, and the faultless rectitude to which history furnishes no parallel, or furnishes a parallel in Washington alone. And Richard Baxter, in enumerating the raptures that he hopes to enjoy in the world to come, places conspicuously among them the ineffable delight of seeing and conversing with the excellent John Hampden.

F W Boreham

Image: John Hampden